The Unwanted by John Saul Read Free Book Online

arms around her. She stiffened for a moment before she let herself relax slightly.
    “I’m sorry, baby,” Keith whispered in her ear. “I would have been here in plenty of time, except for the tunnel. It’s my own fault—I should have left a little earlier.”
    Cassie pulled back and tipped her head up to look at him. “I—I was afraid something had happened. I was afraid—”
    “Shh,” Keith purred, pulling her to him again. “You’re safe, and I’m safe, and nothing’s going to happen to either of us.”
    Taking the heavy tote bag from her, he led her out of the terminal.
    Neither Keith nor Cassie spoke much on the long drive from Boston down to Cape Cod, for Keith was reluctant to press his daughter to talk until she felt like it, and Cassie was, for the moment, content to sit curled against the door, staring out the window at the passing scenery, still hoping for a feeling of familiarity to come over her.
    But none did.
    Instead she had a growing sense that here, in the part of the country where she was born, everything was too small. As they left Boston, and suddenly the urban area ended—replaced by gently rolling hills covered with forests which had a miniature look to them—she suddenly realized that she had no idea which direction they were going.
    At home she’d always known which direction was which, just by the positions of the two mountain ranges that bounded the San Fernando Valley on the north and the south. But here, no matter which way she looked, there were no mountains.
    Cassie began to have a feeling that the countryside was closing in around her. She tried to get over it by concentrating on the forests, but they, too, had a different feeling to them. Her only previous experience with forests had been in the Sierras, or among the redwoods of northern California, where enormous trees, widely spaced and primeval, dominatedthe woods with their splendor. Here even the trees seemed small and crowded together, and looked to her as if they were fighting to survive. Then, finally, they turned off the main highway and began winding along a narrow road, passing through one small town after another. Suddenly things began to look more familiar.
    It wasn’t memory, she decided, or the feeling that she’d been here before. Instead she recognized the towns from pictures she’d seen in magazines, from movies she’d been to, and from television shows she’d watched. Small towns with well-kept yards, which seemed to begin quite suddenly, emerging from the surrounding woodland with no warning, then as suddenly disappearing again. Not at all like the towns she was used to, where you couldn’t really tell where one ended and the next one began. In California, when you went out into the desert, the towns always seemed to start slowly, with a lone house or two sitting back from the road, surrounded by wrecked cars. Then, a little father on, there would be a junkyard, or a gas station, and then more houses, until eventually you would find yourself in a town, not quite certain when you had gotten there.
    Here, in New England, you knew. First you were in the woods, then you were in the middle of a town, then you were in the woods again.
    “Are all the towns like this?” she asked her father.
    Keith, startled out of a reverie, glanced over at her. “Like what?”
    “I don’t know. So … well, all the towns seem separate, as if they’re all by themselves. At home everything runs together.”
    Keith smiled. “I noticed the same thing when I used to go out there. I could never tell the difference between North Hollywood and Studio City and Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks. I could never see how anyone could stand it.”
    For the first time since her mother had died, Cassie found herself giggling. “That’s because there isn’t any difference,” she said. “They’re all the same. The whole Valley’s all the same.” Her smile faded. “Is that how come you stopped coming to visit me? Because you didn’t